American Airlines’ CEO Gerard Arpey dared to dream. He slipped a comment into their recent earnings call which seemed rather off the wall, until Delta CEO Richard Anderson effectively repeated the idea. The proposal? Instead of paying commissions to agencies and websites that sell their fares, airlines would charge those agencies a fee for the right to display and sell their fares.

The activity actually began Thursday evening with a United “attempted” airfare hike (only for travel late June thru early August), followed by one instigated by Continental on Friday morning which had enough overlap to look very similar to partial matching - so over the weekend, we actually saw two airfare hike attempts, and some of the most ridiculous airfare filings I have ever tried to review as matching and rollbacks for both complicated matters tremendously, that and the fact the hike was targeted originally for July departures only.

When I visited Southwest’s operation at Dallas/Love Field last month, it wasn’t a normal day. It just happened to be the first day that the airline had launched its Load Planning System at Love and elsewhere in the system. This new system has the ability to really significantly improve Southwest’s baggage handling.

For four days, Southwest has revealed a city (or in yesterday’s case, an area) that would have a 50% discount on Wanna Get Away fares on all flights. Friday was Philadelphia, Saturday was Nashville, Sunday was Albuquerque, and Monday all Bay Area airports (SFO, OAK, SJC) were on sale.